Rattus, Rattus
by zynaofthenight
Summary: Simon Lewis hated being a rat. Really. And of course, being stolen by a vampire didn't help much either. Simon's thoughts in City of Bones.


_Simon Lewis hated being a rat. Really. And of course, being stolen by a vampire didn't help much either. Simon's thoughts in City of Bones. _

**[A/N]: **Because the world needs a bit more of Simon. XP And I thought rat Simon was really cute :)

zynaofthenight doesn't own the Mortal Instruments…which is yet another new series she has gotten herself obsessed with. At one in the morning. Along with _The Hunger Games_. Sigh.

Oh well. Enjoy. Even though I usually don't write in this fandom, since I tend to loiter around the _Percy Jackson and the Olympians_ fics…

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**-Rattus, Rattus-**

_By: zynaofthenight_

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"What freaks out Jewish vampires?"

Isabelle didn't even bother to spare him a glance. "What?"

"Guess. Silver stars of David? Chopped liver? Checks for eighteen dollars?"

He paused dramatically after his last question, but the pretty girl didn't laugh. Simon sighed and pushed his crooked glasses further up his nose, attempting to straighten them. In the back of his mind, he could hear Clary berating him about how he needed to get better glasses.

Speaking of Clary…

He watched where his best friend had disappeared off with Magnus, Alec, and Jace in midst of the crowd of vampires and other freakish creatures he really didn't want to know about. Clary. She was so different now, she had changed so much. He wondered distantly where the old Clary had gone. It wasn't fair.

_What's not fair?_

He shrugged inwardly. To tell the truth, he had no idea. It was the way he rolled. But inside, he wished that he could be more like the people around him…even if they looked like a cross between a mutant frog and a furry blob of pink.

Okay, maybe not the mutant frog and furry blob of pink part.

He glanced back at Isabelle, who was peering interestedly at a few drinks and sampling them. He shrugged, then yawned. It was really tiring, dancing at midnight, and dancing at a warlock's party surrounded by creatures which the most recognizable were vampires—

"Drinks?"

Simon glanced downwards, startled, as a little green man with a foghorn voice passed by him, carrying a platter that held about a dozen cups of some sort of blue liquid.

"Wait!" he called as the green man continued walking away. "I'd like one."

The green man turned back (not without some expression of annoyance), and passed Simon the drink. Simon took it and peered curiously at the blue liquid. "What is this?"

But the man had already disappeared. Simon shrugged, and raised the cup to his lips. Might as well as find out. He was about to tip the drink into his mouth, when a hand slapped his, and he almost dropped the cup.

"_What was that for?_" he stuttered as soon as he made sure that nothing had splashed out. "I'm trying to drink something here!"

A rather drunk looking Isabelle shook her head, her face blotched and flushed bright pink. "Don't drink that. It's not good for you."

"Like what?"

"Like…I don't know. But it's not good for you." She giggled manically, then wandered back to her drinks, shoving aside a mutated purple creature as she staggered away.

Simon rolled his eyes. Sure, Isabelle used to be extremely hot—she still was, mind you—but it was just that a _drunk_ Isabelle was just crazy. Insane. Mentally off the rocker.

To think of it, so was he.

But that wasn't the point. He ignored Isabelle's tipsy glare, and chugged the drink down. For a moment, it seemed as if nothing had happened, and that the blue liquid was (hopefully) just some sort of blueberry juice. If monsters even drank blueberry juice.

Then he was ankle level, and almost crushed by a huge pair of shoes.

So he had swallowed some sort of a shrinking potion, then. But he suddenly had a strange desire to chew something and eat cheese. He was fine with the eating cheese part…just not the chewing stuff. And when he tried to say something, all that came out was a pathetic _squeak_.

There was a shiny platter near him, and he scuttled over to it, to check out his reflection. When he peered into the plate, he groaned inwardly.

He had turned himself into a mouse. No…that wasn't right. He felt a lot sharper, leaner than a mouse, and his tail was definitely longer. And he was pretty sure mice were a lot plumper than this. And that they didn't have long, sharp yellow teeth.

Fine. Simon Lewis had turned himself into a _rat_.

What was Clary going to say now?

He hopped down from the bar and squeaked again in terror when another huge stomping foot came within a millimeter of his tail. The crevices in the bar next to him looked pretty safe, so he dashed under the edge, and lay there, trembling, hoping that he'd be somehow turned back human soon.

"Simon? Is that you?"

The voice snapped him out of his panic, and he crept forward cautiously, still trembling. It was Clary.

"It's me, Clary," she said slowly. "Are you okay?"

Obviously not. Did she somehow think that being a rat would make him feel okay?

The others had arrived behind Clary. He could hear Jace ask curiously, "Is he under there?"

Clary nodded. "Shh. You'll frighten him off." She put her fingers under the edge of the bar, and said in a coaxing voice, "Please come out, Simon. We'll get Magnus to reverse the spell. It'll be okay."

He squeaked, and jumped into her hands, which elicited a relieved Clary saying "Simon! You understood me!" She hugged him to her chest, crooning "Oh, poor baby. Poor Simon, it'll be fine, I promise."

Simon wasn't really sure about her choice of words, but Clary was hugging him, and making a fuss over him, and frankly…that was all that mattered. Now if only he stayed a rat a bit longer…

As if he had been reading Simon's thoughts, Jace smirked, and leaned back a bit. "I wouldn't feel too sorry for him. That's probably the closest he's ever gotten to second base."

"Shut _up_!" And there went his lovely hug. He squeaked again, and twitched his whiskers indignantly. "Get Magnus," Clary continued sharply, glaring at Jace. "We have to turn him back."

"Let's not be hasty," said Jace, grinning. Simon resisted the urge to bite him. "He's cute like that. Look at his little pink nose." The Shadowhunter reached his hand as if to pet him.

That did it. That Jace was a jerk and a—no, he only used that word for extreme situations. The other boy was getting close to that, though. Simon snapped at Jace angrily and bared his teeth. The boy withdrew his hand, and shrugged. "Izzy, go fetch our magnificent host."

"Why me?" the girl asked, sounding rather annoyed.

"Because it's your fault the mundane's a rat, idiot. And we can't leave him here."

Well then. At least Jace wouldn't abandon him somewhere. That was of some comfort.

"You'd be happy to leave him if it weren't for _her_," Isabelle hissed, and stalked off, skirt flouncing around her hips.

Okay, maybe not.

"I can't believe that she let you drink that blue drink," Clary told him. "Now you see what you get for being so shallow."

He squeaked irritably, then heard a chuckle up above. Magnus Bane was leaning over Clary, peering at Simon. "_Rattus norvegicus_. A common brown rat, nothing exotic."

Darn. If he was going to be a rat for the rest of his miserable life, couldn't he have been changed into some sort of fancy creature?

Apparently, Clary didn't really care what sort of rat or whatnot he turned into. "I don't care what kind of rat he is. I want him turned back."

Simon agreed wholeheartedly with her last sentence. The warlock scratched his head thoughtfully, and glitter sprinkled the air all around them. "No point."

"That's what I said," said Jace, looking pleased. That imbecile.

"NO POINT?" Simon squeaked and ducked under Clary's thumb. He wasn't aware that his best friend could shout so loudly. Or maybe it was being a rat that made everything so much noisier. "HOW CAN YOU SAY THERE'S NO POINT?"

"Because he'll turn back on his own in a few hours," explained Magnus. "The effect of the cocktails is temporary. No point working up a transformation spell; it'll just traumatize him. Too much magic is hard on mundanes, their systems aren't used to it."

Oh. So he wasn't stuck as a common brown rat forever.

"I doubt his system is used to being a rat either," Clary retorted. "You're a warlock, can't you just reverse the spell?"

"No."

"You mean you won't."

"Not for free, darling, and you can't afford me."

"I can't take a rat home on the subway either. I'll drop him, or one of the MTA police will arrest me for transporting pests on the transit system."

Was that just an insult he heard? Simon chirped his annoyance, and Clary added hastily, "Not that you're a pest, of course."

A commotion had started at the door of the house, and Magnus, rolling his eyes, went off to control it. Isabelle sighed. "So much for _his_ help."

"You know," said Alec to Clary, "you could always put the rat in your backpack."

What? But already, Clary had placed Simon into her backpack, snuggled between her sweater and her sketchpad. He curled up atop her wallet, feeling rather reproachful.

"I'm sorry," Clary apologized.

"Don't bother," said Jace. "Why mundanes always insist on taking responsibility for things that aren't their fault is a mystery to me. You didn't force that cocktail down his idiotic throat."

"It it weren't for me, he wouldn't have been here at all."

"Don't flatter yourself. He came because of Isabelle."

And of course, at that moment, his vision had to be blocked by a sudden darkness. He panicked for a while before he realized that Clary must have zipped her backpack shut. So he lay there, occasionally thrown to one side as the backpack was bumped. He was going to be one huge bruise by the time he changed back to human.

A hand crept into the backpack, and grasped him. He lay still, assuming that it was just Clary, but then, he was rather unceremoniously shoved into another pit of darkness. After yet another long period of being jostled about, he felt the another hand close around him.

And then he was being taken out, right into the face of a blonde vampire.

Well that complicated matters.

Just lovely. Lovely. Simon could be screaming in frustration now if rats could scream. But since they couldn't, he contented himself with glaring at the vampire who was now holding him.

"Hey, it's a rat!" The vampire laughed, and held Simon up. He gulped as he saw his image reflected in the eyes of a huge group of vampires standing in front of him. They seemed to be in an old, creepy hotel, surrounded with…uh…more vampires.

This was really bad. And where in the world was he, by the way?

"Hey! Is that Zeke?" A vampire with dreadlocks pushed his way through the crowd, and peered at Simon. "Jacob, I think that's Zeke."

"He's yours, Elliott." the blonde vampire said, grinning, his slightly pointed fangs shining brightly in the gloom that surrounded the hotel they were in. Simon shuddered as he envisioned those fangs sinking into someone. "Such a nice little pet, don't you think?"

Simon started wishing that this was all a dream, and that he'd wake up the next day, human, and in his bed, with no Shadowhunters, no vampires, and most of all, no rats. He closed his eyes and hoped fervently that he would just drift off and come out of Lala Land. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes again.

No such luck. He, Simon Lewis, was still a rat. Captured by a bunch of creepy vampires, too.

At least he wasn't a hippo.

But then, as he considered it, hippos wouldn't have been mistaken as a common brown rat named Zeke. maybe it was better to be a hippo.

What an appalling thought.

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**[A/N]: **Review please? :D


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